20 Key Benefits Of Automation Systems In The Service Desk Industry

Service desks normally combine a large number of individual processes and workflows. For example, incident management is broken down into tasks, change management into stages and statuses, project management into milestones, and so on.

Manually carrying out every task is not only cumbersome and time-consuming but can also introduce human error into the process. This is where automation will help.

What are the benefits of automation?

1. Reduced Cost:
The overall cost of ticket management is increased when processes are taken up manually. Ticket resolution when automated can help reduce the overall cost incurred per ticket. This automation can streamline incoming communication and can help teams work on more serious tasks instead of focussing on mundane tasks.

2. Improved Customer Satisfaction:

If there is anything that annoys customers, it is the delay in getting their issues resolved. With the help of automation, support staff can keep customers informed with little or no effort required from support staff.

Automation of call notifications and call resolution emails will :

• Ensure that your customers understand what is happening with their calls
  
  
• Help to manage their expectation
  
  

3. Faster Processes:

Processes when done manually take quite some time for their completion, for example, ticket resolution; it would take a lot of back and forth conversation between the user and the support staff to understand the scope of the problem. But with automation, the entire process of ticket resolution takes less time.

4. Skyrocketing Productivity:

Automation leads to an increase in the productivity of Support Staff as some manual processes prone to errors may become faultless and helps the team to focus on core tasks. This reduction in errors, costs and time leads to higher overall Service Desk efficiency improving the Business as a whole.

5. Faster Response Time:

Server Desk teams are assessed by how quickly they can resolve or respond to issues that arise. Faster resolution of tickets, incidents leads to an improvement in customer satisfaction.

For example, if a Service Desk receives a call on a particular printer problem, then this automation process can identify the type of call, route it to the right person and also send an automated response to the end-user on the updates of the issue.

By creating this omnichannel support existence comprising of Human teams, Self-service portals, and software, the business can offer 24/7 support without draining the budgets.

6. Improved Staff Satisfaction:

While service desk staff are willing to help customers in need, sometimes they take up repetitive and mundane tasks. With the help of automation, the overall time and effort spent by Server Desk staff on mundane and repetitive tasks is decreased and can help the staff work on more challenging tasks which need more workforce and eventually leads to job satisfaction.

With lesser scope for errors to occur, technicians will not have to go back and forth with the Error-free tickets also reduce the chances of technicians having to go back and forth with the requesters, so they can focus on resolving tickets instead.

7. End-to-end visibility:

Customers would be kept uninformed on the status of a particular ticket but with Service Desk automation, customers can get insights into the performance factor and understand the pain points as and when they occur.

This helps in keeping the customers updated on the status and actions taken to resolve the issue/incident.

8. Consistent Experience:

While customers dread having to wait on a call to get their issues/incidents resolved, on automation, every time a customer is faced with an issue, they get the same experience each and every time. With the help of automation, Service Desk can ensure that processes and workflows are executed the same way and on time. This helps in terms of efficiency.

9. Accurate Reporting:

Human errors are commonly found in the documentation. Automation of the Service Desk helps in reducing human errors and inconsistencies during data entry. This automation also reduces the burden on those who manually collect data and correct errors.

10. Employee Onboarding:

In today’s fast-paced competitive world, no employee can risk losing a quality employee based on poor IT service. The entire onboarding process, when done manually, takes up a lot of precious time but the automation of the Service Desk ensures a seamless experience during the Onboarding process of a new employee.

11. Flexibility:

While adapting to a change can be difficult, it is necessary and this has become simpler than ever due to automation. Creating and implementing new automation-based practices is easier and instead of having the training staff to do the things the manual way, it's become easy to enforce best practices every time a process is carried out.

12. Industrialization of processes:

Some repetitive processes will not adapt to changes very well but automation of service desk ensures that the processes and workflows are continuously repeated and are said to be industrialized if they are easily executable, delivers consistent results, and provides scope for improvement over a given time frame.

13. Greater ability to change:

While people are used to working in a particular way, it can take time to change to a new way of working. This is where automation provides a hybrid model combining both the manual and the self-service processes.

14. Better people and resource utilization:

Due to automation, fewer people are needed for certain processes. This helps the staff to focus on more important aspects of their job and automation will also help in freeing up highly-skilled and knowledgeable staff from repeatable, often mundane, tasks to focus on more “intelligent” work.

15. Enhancing the Rejection Process:

Sometimes tickets go unresolved and are rejected without any proper reasoning, this is often frustrating to a customer. Automation of Service Desk can make it mandatory for an authorizer to include a rejection reason when he/she rejects a ticket. Once this ticket has been rejected, the ticket closes itself and sends a closure notification to the customer along with the rejection reason. This prevents confusion.

16. Improved quality of delivered services:

Manual delivery of services like ticket management might lose its quality if the expectations are not met. Automation helps improve the value of a business and can be seen differently by different business stakeholders. Due to the reduced costs, increased productivity, and efficiency, the overall service of a business is better.

17. More efficient release management:

Release management can be strenuous when done manually and can sometimes involve a lot of workforces for a release to be done, automation can handle the strain with releases.

18. Reduced unplanned IT work time:

Finding and fixing errors can be time-consuming and can sometimes lead to an extension in the work time of the Support Staff. The support staff would not leave until the work is done but with automation, all these unplanned tasks can be completed on time and over time with the help of a button and can lead to job satisfaction.

19. Knowledge management:

Service Desk when implemented manually would need the technician to get in touch with the end-user multiple times in order to get some information that could not be assimilated in the first call.

Automated ticketing ensures a process which consists of critical data and information is readily available to technicians, instead of having to ask the end-user every time a ticket is created. This helps for consistent delivery and resolution of tickets effectively.

20. Dynamic ticket routing and escalation:

Manual Service Desks would require a technician to decide whether the ticket is to be escalated to a higher level or not but with automation, those tickets which need to be escalated can easily be determined by routing the same to the appropriate technicians and in turn improves the efficiency, accuracy, and end-user satisfaction.

Service Desk takes up a lot of tasks and can be really strenuous and time-consuming in terms of ticket management, change management, and incident management. Providing solutions to the customers becomes a priority and to do so, it is required to adapt to the best practices mentioned above. Not only do you receive customer satisfaction but your business also grows as a whole.